Just finished watching Amazon's "The Man in the High Castle - Season 1". It was excellent, a real brain-twister for the first nine episodes and then an unexpected ending to the tenth. Not quite the style of ending that bemused folk who watched the Coen Brothers' masterpiece "No Country for Old Men", but unexpected nevertheless. There's a second season due sometime in 2016, so it will be interesting to see where the plot takes us next.

That said, Amazon's "The Man in the High Castle" is only very loosely based on the novel by Philip K. Dick, and the storyline takes many major departures from his work. If you've only had the pleasure of one, I recommend both.

Only read the stuff where the links take you to if you're OK with spoilers.

Apologies for the lack of regular posts. I fear that I'm becoming a virtual hiker...

Outdoorsy stuff

For me it's all on hold after the latest consultation. The expert reckons that I might have to wait another six months for my insides to heal fully, only then will they consider a further procedure to remove the tags and piles that were caused by the original op. Any exertion aggravates said tags, leading to inflammation, infection and blockage, this means that I only get limited exercise which in turn has led to significant muscle-loss and a reduction of core body strength. I'm now so unfit that wielding the vacuum-cleaner for only 10 minutes on Wednesday resulted in me straining my back and now I'm confined to quarters and popping the Ibuprofens. Looks like our week in Skye later this month will be a sightseeing tour rather than an opportunity to assault some classic ridges and peaks.

Olympics

Well, I have plenty of time to watch the events on the box as I'm pretty much a captive audience. Anna's down The Smoke right now on a school-trip, she was in the basketball arena this evening watching Team GB v France and Team USA v The Czech Republic, where the Beeb's camera caught her and her friends doing their bit of a magnificent Mexican Wave. After overnighting at Eton College she'll be spending the morning in Greenwich Park watching the equestrian events.

Astronomy

I have plenty of time for this too, but the weather's been naff at night. On the odd occasions when it's been cloudless the jetstream has been playing havoc with the seeing - the last time I imaged the Moon it looked like someone was pouring water over it:

Hailstorm damage

The Loss Adjuster's been around and we have agreed terms. We've already been paid out for damage to the outbuildings, primarily because I'd done the pricing-up myself, but we're still waiting for builders to provide quotes for the repairs to the house roof and the windows. There's so much property damage around here that we're on a long waiting-list for repair-work, we're looking at mid- to late-September at the earliest.

On the face of it, it's an ad about how National Lottery funding has helped one K. Edwards to represent GB in the 2012 Olympics as an 800m runner. It's oddly anachronistic and we still can't figure out why her mum looks so old at the end of it, but I suppose that only the nit-picking few would be bothered by that.

Of course, K. Edwards doesn't really exist. The ad is based on the story of Team GB athlete Jenny Meadows and her mother Barbara, who was also an athlete, but unable to compete in the Olympics because of a lack of funding. The Meadows are played by actors and the story is narrated by the mother, looking back at their lives.

MORE LINKS

AMBIONICS FUNDRAISER

HEADS UP!

IT’S A SMALL WORLD…

Top Tip:If the small world looks squished on your monitor, your aspect ratio's out of whack and all images here will appear distorted, thus making a mockery of all the processing that I've had to do to get half-decent pics.It's a simple thing to fix, so DO IT!

CREATIVE COMMONS

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 Licence.If you use any of my work, please link back to its source.Click the CC logo above to check the terms of this licence.

AFORE WE GO...

This blog supports the notion that Implied Consent is a valid form of consent in the context of compliance with the E.U. e-Privacy Directive.

If YOU don't want this site to place cookies on YOUR computer YOU should set YOUR browser to reject them.

AFFILIATE LINKS?

Not on this blog.I don't make a bean out of this place,not even from referrals, clickthroughs and reviews.

ODDS & ENDS

This blog's optimised for Firefox and a screen resolution of 1280 x 800 px, and the pics are optimised for a matte screen. If you're using a different setup, YMMV.This blog's powered by WordPress and a home-brewed skin running on a modded version of Mike Little’s Journalized Theme Version 2.